Grow Up

All month, as a church, we’ve been focusing on the idea of “GROW”

• Grow Deep
• Grow Strong
• Grow Together
• Grow Up

This week, we focus on Grow Up.  The last couple of days, Pastor Matt has encouraged us to do this together…be part of community and make room for each other’s immaturity (including our own).

Do and Not Do

Let me add this. To Grow Up, we must continue to grow. Yeah, that’s deep…or simple. I don’t know, but it’s true.

The Apostle Peter says this about the subject,

17You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. 18But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.  -2 Peter 3:17-18 (ESV)

Peter seems to say we don’t grow for a period of time, but we grow and continue to grow. There is no end to our growing. There should be no end to our growing.

What does it mean to grow? Well in another simple (yet profound) phrasing, we do the things we know to do, and we don’t do the things we know not to do.

Easy right?

No, and that’s why so many people stop growing. They don’t want to do the hard work.

Conviction

In her book, Wherever the River Runs, about her travels up and down the Amazon doing mission work, Kelly Minter says,

Conviction leads to transformation.

A seed transforms to a seedling, which transforms to a sapling, which transforms to a tree, which transforms to a mature tree. The transformation of a seed to mature tree is growth.

If we believe growth comes through doing the things we know to do, and not doing things we know not to do, then it begins with conviction.

Conviction is the work of the Holy Spirit. He prompts, nudges and sometimes screams to us things to do and not do. As Christians, convictions should be obeyed. It’s the beginning of transformation.

Most of us don’t like conviction. It means work. It means change. It’s not easy.

But then again, growth isn’t easy. If it was then everyone would be doing it.

So do the hard work. Listen to your conviction. Transform. Grow.

I want to continue the conversation from yesterday – that community builds maturity, that growing up and growing together…go together.

When our girls (twin daughters) weren’t quite two, they were sitting in a little cushioned chair reading a book together. Well, it wasn’t just any book. They were reading a little story book bible that was a favorite of ours. Adelaide had the book in her lap and was “reading” the stories to her sister, Pen. She’d just come to the page in the book that had a picture of three crosses, that centerpiece of the Gospel story, and Pen was huddled up close to her and following along. It was a beautiful little scene. Until…

Pen reached for the book.

Without hesitation, Adelaide snatched the book away and pushed her to the floor. Knocked her right out of the chair and onto the floor.

It still makes me laugh.

And it makes me think.

Christianity’s easy when you’ve got the chair to yourself.

But when you’ve got to make room for someone else, well, that takes a bit of maturity.

And it’s this making room for others that pops up again and again throughout so much of the New Testament. Consider this passage (one of many) from Philippians 2:1-5:

1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus…

Yesterday, we referenced the fruit of the Spirit as markers of Christian maturity – love, joy, peace, and the like. This time Paul describes maturity as unity, humility, unselfishness, consideration for others. Different words, same fruits. These are grown-up traits, and they find their expression in community, in the living of our lives with others.

Today, I want to invite you to make some room for others. Maybe, for much of your Christian walk, you’ve had the chair to yourself. This passage invites you into community – invites you to make room for someone else – and so to experience growth in your walk with Christ. 

One opportunity at Cross Points to make room for others (and build maturity!) is to join a GROW Group. You can find a group here! It’s one of the reasons we value small groups and encourage everyone at Cross Points to be in a group. Because we know that stepping into community will build your maturity! If you haven’t already, take a moment and sign up for a group!

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.  Ephesians 4:15-16

You’ve probably heard the old proverb that says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” It suggests that children benefit from a community – that community helps build maturity.

It’s a theme that seems to pop up in these verses in Ephesians. These verses (and many more like them!) suggest that growing UP and growing TOGETHER…go together. Or to put it another way: community helps build maturity.

Let’s take Galatians 5 and the fruit of the Spirit as an example.

Occasionally, in some of my weaker (read: childish) moments, it will cross my mind that living the fruit of the Spirit – you know, love, joy, peace, patience and all that – would be much easier if I were by myself!

Just let me meditate in solitude on these fruits as the noble virtues they are – piece of cake. But drop me in the middle of a family, a neighborhood, a small group, a church, a community…you get the idea.

So much of the life of discipleship is fleshed out in community.

No surprise that “love God” is immediately followed by “love your neighbor.” The two greatest commandments, Jesus says. (Mark 12:30-31).

And so we get passages like this one in Ephesians. Christ is the head, the center, the focus. Again and again, the call goes out: Look at Jesus. And what’s the evidence of this singular focus? The fruit of this pursuit? We treat each other differently.  We build each other up.

It came up in our GROW Group last night. We don’t just grow from the experience of God’s providential care in our own lives. We also grow from witnessing His care for others. Maybe we’re agents of that care in someone else’s life. Maybe we’re only spectators to what God is doing in and for someone. Fact is, we need each other. To encourage each other. To sharpen each other. To speak the truth in love to each other.

I made new friends last night. We read a little scripture together. Shared a bit of God’s work in our lives…and I grew up.

Over the next few weeks, we’re growing together as a church in small groups. Why? Lots of reasons. But one of them…it helps us grow up.  Community builds maturity.

Let me invite you (it’s not too late!) join a GROW Group. Sign up online (Grow Group) or on the Cross Points app. Make space for Christian community in your life, and watch it build maturity in your walk with Jesus.

Worship: O Come to the Altar Elevation Worship

Yesterday I preached a message entitled, “Grow Up.”  In it I referenced three key components of maturity.  For review the three points are:

1. You can’t grow up unless you “bow down”  – God calls us to a humble lifestyle

2. You can grow up until you “jump in” – We won’t please God without faith

3. You’ll never grow up if you don’t “build up” – It’s all useless without love. Knowledge puffs up, love builds up.

God wants you to grow up!  He wants me to grow up.  His desire is for us to continue growing throughout our entire life.

In my message I referenced a few quotes from Spurgeon.  Here is the rest of what he had to say about the important maturing quality of faith:

Christian, take good care of your faith; for remember faith is the only way by which we may obtain blessings. If we want blessings from God, nothing can fetch them down but faith.

Prayer cannot draw down answers from God’s throne except it be the earnest prayer of the one who believes. Faith is the angelic messenger between the soul and the Lord Jesus in glory. Let that angel be withdrawn, we can neither send up prayer, nor receive the answers.

Faith is the telegraphic wire which links earth and heaven–on which God’s messages of love fly so fast, that before we call he answers, and while we are yet speaking he hears us. But if that telegraphic wire of faith be snapped, how can we receive the promise? Am I in trouble?–I can obtain help for trouble by faith. Am I beaten about by the enemy?–my soul on her dear Refuge leans by faith.

But take faith away–in vain I call to God.

There is no road between my soul and heaven. In the deepest wintertime faith is a road on which the horses of prayer may travel–yes, and all the better for the biting frost; but blockade the road, and how can we communicate with the Great King? Faith links me with divinity. Faith clothes me with the power of God. Faith engages on my side the omnipotence of Jehovah.

Faith ensures every attribute of God in my defence. It helps me to defy the hosts of hell. It makes me march triumphant over the necks of my enemies.

But without faith how can I receive anything of the Lord?

Let not him that wavers–who is like a wave of the Sea–expect that he will receive anything of God! O, then, Christian, watch well thy faith; for with it you can win all things, however poor you are, but without it you can obtain nothing. “If you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes.”